Stewart leads Seattle to fourth title

BRADENTON, Fla. — Breanna Stewart scored 26 points, and the Seattle Storm won their second WNBA championship in three seasons, sweeping the Las Vegas Aces with a 92-59 rout Tuesday night.

It’s the fourth title in franchise history for the Storm, who also won in 2004, 2010 and 2018. Seattle had pretty much the same core group that won the 2018 championship back for this year, led by Stewart, Sue

Bird and Jewell Loyd. The

Storm joined Minnesota and Houston as the only franchises to win four championships.

Seattle has now won a record 11 games in a row in the WNBA Finals, dating to the team’s first championship in 2004. Bird has been a part of all of them. The veteran guard, who turns 40 next week, was once again a catalyst for the Storm. She finished with five points and seven assists. She finished the finals averaging 11 assists in the three games.

The 26-year-old Stewart set a WNBA record by scoring more than 20 points for the sixth consecutive finals game. She earned WNBA Finals MVP honors for the second time in her young career, becoming the fifth player to win multiple finals MVPs.

A’ja Wilson, the league’s regular-season MVP, tried to keep the Aces alive. She had 14 of her 18 points in the first quarter, hitting 5 of her 9 shots.

Despite scoring the first seven points of the game, Las Vegas trailed 23-21 after one quarter after the Storm closed the period on an 11-2 run. Seattle then scored the first six points of the second. Seattle extended its two-point advantage to 43-34 at the half.

Seattle put the game away in the third quarter, scoring 12 of the first 14 points in the period.

Stewart